Middlebury College banned it, but 46% of college students and 50% of college grads use it.

Twelve year olds point out errors in its competition, while those over 50 are among its smallest demographic — just 29% (Just! 29%!) say they’ve used it.

It’s Wikipedia, of course, and the numbers come from a recent Pew Internet Project memo reporting that Wikipedia is used by 36% of the online population and is one of the top ten destinations on the web.

wikipedia, pip, pew internet project, information behavior

Another great comic from XKCD:

“I feel like I’m wasting my life on the internet. Let’s walk around the world.”

“Sounds good.”

[panels showing the world's great beauty, a truly grand adventure]

“And yet all I can think of is ‘this will make for a great Livejournal entry.’”

blog, blogging, blogs, information behavior, internet, journaling, life, livejournal

It was more than a year ago that Lorcan Dempsey pointed out this bit from The Chronicle:

Librarians should not assume that college students welcome their help in doing research online. The typical freshman assumes that she is already an expert user of the Internet, and her daily experience leads her to believe that she can get what she wants online without having to undergo a training program. Indeed, if she were to use her library’s Web site, with its dozens of user interfaces, search protocols, and limitations, she might with some justification conclude that it is the library, not her, that needs help understanding the nature of electronic information retrieval.

So I’m continually surprised to find people defending our old, broken search systems in the face of pressure from internet search services that we’ve all come to depend on.

Thing is, where’s the greater criticism in this?

Google’s simplicity and impressive search prowess trick students into thinking they are good all-around searchers, and when they fail in library searches, they are ashamed as well as confused.

Does the above serve to emphasize the “laziness” and “intellectual inferiority” that seem to be the theme of so many of our discussions about “today’s students?” Or does it instead show how backward we and our systems are?

I second Peter Binkley’s retort, but I also want to point out the huge wedge being driven between academic libraries and our patrons. We see it in the two perspectives on that quote above. Right now it’s a matter of not meeting patron needs, but I’m also worried about what happens when those students become faculty, and later, administrators. How will they value the library then?

(Title graphic from GoogleAlive. Go play, it’s fun.)

google, information, information behavior, information search and retrieval, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, library systems, online behavior, peter binkley, search behavior, search engines, search practice, Steven Cohen, web searching

These pictures are mostly foolish, but here’s a small point: none of us had ever seen a cop pull over a cab — certainly not a cab with passengers — before this, so we were all rather curious about why. In front of us stood a question, an example of the many questions we all encounter every day, and it’s the kind of question that few of us would ever suggest going to the library to answer.

Later on we found Jason, who taught us a bit of history we probably should have known, and clearly could have taught us some more. But when asked about how he’d settle a bar bet, he said he’d likely go to Google. He noted that he’d look at the search results carefully, but admitted that he probably wouldn’t be found going to his library for answers.

cambridge, cambridge ma, future libraries, future library, information, information behavior, information seeking, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, massachusetts, police, question, questions, reference, reference information, sign, silly

Users want a rich pool from which to search, simplicity, and satisfaction. One does not have to take a 50-minute instruction session to order from Amazon. Why should libraries continue to be so difficult for our users to master?

— from page 8 of the The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force Final Report. I find a new gem every time I look at it.

design philosophy, future libraries, information behavior, information design, libraries, library, library 2.0, search, searching, simplicity, user centered design

Lichen pointed me to this Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette post about new technologies:

Keep up to date with new technologies that you can co-opt for library use. So what if no one will ever listen to the pod casts of your bibliographic instruction lectures, subscribe to the RSS feeds from your library’s blog, send your reference librarian instant messages, or view your library’s profile on facebook.com? At least you did your part to make all these cool technologies a little bit lamer.

Point taken, and it’s a reasonable caution. The same rush to embrace trends that has us putting coffee shops in our libraries might also push us into trying to setup shop in online forums like Facebook, but who’s to say we should go there? After all, people have been gathering in bars for years, but the we don’t see branches opening in Cheers or libraries offering Irish coffee in their new coffee shops.

But there is something to learn from these new technologies. I just saw numbers that suggested Facebook (an optional service) gets about the same usage by our students as our university portal (which students are required to use, even to check email). Match that with the growing number of stories I’ve been hearing of students using Facebook to collaborate on class projects, and we have to conclude that something interesting is happening.

I’m going to avoid the question of whether libraries should be trying to offer services inside Facebook, and instead ask the question of how well our existing services work for those using Facebook. If students are collaborating, they’re likely sharing URLs, but our OPACs and databases often aren’t bookmarkable, making it difficult to exchange links to those resources (and instructions like these don’t help either). And if somebody blogs about one of our items, our catalogs don’t support comments or trackbacks, making it a one-sided conversation. Facebook and other online services are important to our patrons, and we would do well to think about how information is exchanged using those technologies. We would do well to build services that interoperate with the internet that people are using.

social software, social internet, internet and society, internet and academia, facebook, myspace, library, libraries, future libraries, information behavior, durable links, academia

Via Librarian Way I found the LiS Radio webcast of a conversation between Sandra Erdelez and Karen Fischer, two of three editors of Theories of Information Behavior from ASIS&T and Information Today.

Unfortunately, the interview focuses on how the book came to be more than the content, but the description reads:

overviews of more than 70 conceptual frameworks for understanding how people seek, manage, share, and use information in different contexts.

Request, can we have another LiS Radio webcast where these theories are discussed?

tags: information, information behavior, librarian, libraries, library, lis, lisradio, manage, radio, seek, share, use